


Tell It Slant

by etothey



Category: Fray (comic)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to springgreen and Melymbrosia for the beta.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Tell It Slant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstgold/gifts).



> Many thanks to springgreen and Melymbrosia for the beta.

 

 

After two hundred years, the Slayer's back. She's a silhouette in the city, a shadow in the streets. She's death in the alleys when the moon is dark, hope in the ruins when the rain is cold. She carries a red crescent; it's her best friend and your worst nightmare.

She's the one girl in all the world, that old, forgotten chant.

Tell the story, even if you must tell it slant.

She is Melaka Fray, and what she is, is tired. It's been five years, five endless years since she faced down Harth. You can only live on alert so long. This is true whether you are a Slayer or a child or a cop in the uppers. This is true whether you are human or lurk.

Most people have given Harth up for dead, but Mel knows better. The lurks know it, too. They listen outside her squat when she sleeps--the nights she sleeps--cunning, silent of foot. Of course they don't breathe, not even to whisper to each other. Words are something they hoard, something for their master.

They don't know where Harth is, but that's never stopped them before. They didn't have a purpose before Harth and his twin came into the world, split branch from an extinct line. Even darkness has an ecology, a sense of hierarchy. This was true back when the Old Ones thundered across the world, before the humans came; it is true now.

So they spy on the Slayer, and they fight her. They fight her in a hundred different haunts. Night, day, it doesn't matter. There are always shadows to accommodate them. They fight high above the ground, on perilous beams, or down in the treacherous tunnels, or in corners foul with radiation and spilled chemicals.

There are always more lurks, and there's only one of her. Nevertheless, you're never tempted to help her. Best if she doesn't see you. There's no way that story could end well.

Besides, Slayers are perfectly capable of handling themselves. And this one, this one has a family: her sister. You've tested the boundaries of Erin Fray's door. She's not stupid. None of the doors and windows would admit you, and you put the security systems back in place before you left, like a polite guest.

Erin found out, like the good cop she is. That didn't help her finger you, because you took all the precautions you've learned over the years. It reassures you that she tries for weeks and weeks. In fact, she probably still has an open file on the incident.

She never told Mel. You'd know if she had, because Mel would have come after you.

Once upon a time, things were different. Once upon a time, for a brief, shining era, there were many Slayers. None of the lurks remember it, but you do. One was bright as summer and one was dark as despair. They're long gone, now: gone where lurks can't go, gone where vampires can't go.

You don't remember when the word became "lurk" instead of "vampire." It doesn't seem like an important detail, when there are so many things you have forgotten and remembered and forgotten again.

Sometimes you perch on crumbling ledges to watch this new Slayer. She's all instinct and acrobatics, this one, bravery crumbling around the edges. You are still what you are; the taste of her terror, lingering in the air after she's gone, makes your dead heart clench with longing.

You sketch her sometimes, because you can't help yourself. It's part of the story, anyway. You draw her fierce and terrible, which is not all that inaccurate from a lurk's perspective. She's compact and wiry and tough, with subtle but unmistakable musculature.

It's sometimes hard for you to distinguish between past and present, past and future. So you leave graffiti on walls and beneath bridges, in thick, dark strokes. Melaka with a sword as Acathla's mouth gapes steadily wider, Melaka riding a dragon over a devastated city (all broken cities are the same, somewhere in the back of your head), Melaka confronting Harth beneath a benediction of snow.

Some of the paintings last longer than others. Community beautification is not exactly a priority in places like Versi. You never paint the same place twice; photographic memory is good for something.

One time, you even paint Urkonn outside Melaka's squat. It takes you a while, because you arrived in Haddyn after his death. You spent months asking lurks about his appearance. You wanted to get it right, a gift and a eulogy and a warning all at once. You were there when Melaka saw the portrait. She stared at it for half an hour as she did pull-ups. She traced the lines of the portrait, those she could reach, anyway. She didn't cry.

Then she went to get solvent and wiped the whole thing away. The wall was as clean and heartless as a mirror, but you know she won't forget.

You like to think that if she met you, even without the guidance of the dreams, Melaka would stake you on sight. It's a black sort of comfort for a black sort of world. You'll take what you can get.

Meanwhile, you tell the lurks stories of the Slayers. You tell them about sending a city to hell, about Watchers, about the woman you loved and the son you killed. You tell them about Old Ones and Hellmouths and Wolfram & Hart.

Even in echoes, your name has survived the centuries. They listen.

Most of all, you tell them about their very own Slayer. You tell them what you see in Melaka Fray: Buffy's heart and Faith's pragmatism, the divided love that will let her kill the thing her brother has become.

The dead need stories just as much as the living. If Harth will not rise from his place of hiding, then you have a little time remaining: time to give Melaka a legend to grow into, a legend that will defeat her brother.

The rest, the rest is up to her.

 


End file.
